A Haunting in Venice (09.22.23)

 

Summer is over, and with its passing we lay to rest another season of giant blockbusters. In autumn the releases tend to get a little smaller, occasionally a bit smarter, and often a tad spookier. When the big budget behemoths hibernate, films like A Haunting in Venice shyly make their way into the theaters, but audiences needn’t be shy about visiting them, at least not when they’re at the same quality level as Venice, the latest Kenneth Branagh-led Agatha Christie adaptation (based on her 1969 novel Hallowe'en Party) featuring the famously mustachioed Hercule Poirot.

A Haunting in Venice is smaller in scope when compared to the previous Poirot offerings: A Murder on the Orient Express and A Death on the Nile. This scaled-back approach works to the film’s benefit, as it gives us a more intimate and focused mystery to untangle. The fact that this film isn’t absolutely stuffed to the gills with household names like Orient Express and Nile were (besides Branagh, the only actors I recognized were Tina Fey and Michelle Yeoh) is actually a good thing. By featuring “smaller” names the movie gives the impression that we are watching actual people instead of a group of pretty people acting like other people.

Is the mystery these characters are subject to smart? Yes, if fairly undemanding and ultimately pretty simple. I was never overwhelmed with quickly rattled off deductions made by a heavily accented Branagh, which was not the case with the previous two films, but I was also never wowed with the mystery itself. The denouement is perfectly understandable, and I didn’t have any lingering questions after leaving the theater, which was downright refreshing for someone like myself who has to understand the finer points of every plot but still often misses things.

The thing that sets A Haunting in Venice apart is instead how this mystery is presented. As you can probably tell from the title, Venice is much spookier than your typical Agatha Christie adventure, making excellent use of tried-and-true horror tropes while never quite devolving into a straight horror film (I’m usually a wuss with scary movies, but I got through this no problem). A lot of this success is owed to beautiful visuals and Branagh’s direction, which can only be described as Alfred Hitchcockian-- At least when it comes to dynamic shots… he does have a slightly distracting tendency to be a bit too static when filming scenes that are exclusively dialogue, awkwardly focusing on one character at a time in close-up, which sometimes makes it feel like they aren’t actually in the same room as the person they’re talking to. This slick combination of whodunit and horror makes A Haunting in Venice a must-see for fans of the mystery genre, even those who are scardey cats like me. Because while the scariest thing is always the unknown, you can bet that a guy like Poirot won’t let things be unknown for too long.

A Haunting in Venice is now playing in theaters. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on September 22^nd, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/.

Stan Lee (09.15.23)

 

If you’ve seen a movie based on a Marvel comic, odds are you’ve seen the old guy with the mustache and, more often than not, sunglasses. He shows up and says something funny and then disappears, only to show up in the next film as a different character with a different funny thing to say. This is Stan Lee, comic superstar and co-creator of Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, and pretty much every other Marvel superhero that dates back to the 1960s and 70s. As a prominent pop culture icon, Stan was one of the most vocal advocates of the power of comic books up until his death in 2018, and now, five years later, we get a chance to know the man himself with Disney+’s Stan Lee, an entertaining if somewhat perfunctory documentary that is more honest than I was expecting, if still a bit sanitized and white washed.

              Stan himself narrates the documentary via a mixture of archived interview soundbites which naturally gives rise to questions about objectivity. Stan Lee isn’t an in-depth tell-all put together by impartial researchers, but instead feels like sitting down to listen to your grandpa as he talks about his life as he remembers it. One must also remember that, with all due respect to his legacy and legitimate creativity, business acumen, and general ingenuity, Stan was not afraid to take the spotlight in his day. Indeed, he often relished it. So while Stan Lee does touch on the main events and touchstones in the Marvelous Maestro’s life, one cannot help but feel like some things are being left out or misrepresented, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

              That being said, there were a couple of moments that surprised me with their honesty. Stan and his equally legendary collaborators Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko famously had fallings out over who deserved credit for what creations, and Stan Lee does not shy away from this conflict, nor does it choose sides and declare that one party was right and the other party was wrong. It is true that Kirby and Ditko are very much out of focus in this documentary, but one must remember that this is a documentary about Stan Lee, not Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. It is also not a documentary about Marvel Comics itself; once Stan essentially retires the film jumps from the late 70s to 2010, leaving a lot of history unexplored (on the plus side, this means the documentary never turns into an advertisement for the Marvel or Disney, which I must admit I was concerned was a possibility). If there’s one thing I can fault Stan Lee for other than the predominant lack of objectivity it’s this: We never really get into any real depth, instead opting to jump from heading to heading on the Stan Lee Wikipedia page.

              Don’t get me wrong, Stan Lee is still an entertaining documentary that does have a lot of truth to it. One should just make sure to approach things with that ever-important grain of salt.

              Stan Lee is now available on Disney+. 

 

This review was first published in the Keizertimes on September 15^th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/